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Fall One Year Later - October 13th 2019
It's a sunday in October, and when I step outside in the garden itś like stepping into a tropical forest or greenhouse. It's warm and damp, and I breathe in humid, sweet air. Sounds of myriads of birds that are resting in the trees surround me. It is a magical moment. When I look around, I see the weeds I haven't picked, the parts of the garden that aren't nearly done, and the raised beds that are starting to run empty. But it's all part of the process. I also see the purple berries of the Callicarpa, the pink flowering Japanese anemones, small raindrops that hang in the Stipa tenuissima and lay on the sprawling Cerinthe major. In that moment, all is good.
Top: Anemone tomentosa 'Robustissima'; Berries from the Callicarpa bodinieri 'Profusion'. Bottom: Blue Valley's ('Grote Wasbloem' in Dutch).
Last year around this time I started gardening, and it has been rewarding. The middle patch of the garden is the only part that I have attempted so far to plant up properly, aside from the raised beds. I chose to use mostly perennials. I took up a set of 21 tiles together with my dad, dug out the sharp sand, and filled it with new soil. At the last moment in November I planted it up with still tiny plants. At the edges I planted grasses, Festuca glauca 'Elijah Blue' that didn't look blue at the time at all, and small plugs of wavy Stipa tenuissima 'Ponytails'. The Festuca's I had left I plugged into triangular holes around my raised beds from the pattern tiles I took out earlier. I planted a shrub on the right of the middle patch, Callicarpa bodinieri 'Profusion', which eventually could end up 1.5 meters tall. In the middle I planted pale pink Japanese anemonies, and oriental poppies 'Perry's White'. I left a big gap to fill in in the spring with Dierama's I still had to locate. It was muddy and messy, but it was a tremendously satisfying process to take out tiles and put in things that were alive.
The planted anemone's and oriental poppies are still so tiny you can hardly see them amidst the mud!
In early spring, the plants were established and started growing. I added a few Dierama's I wanted that I managed to find in the wonderful nursery "De Hessenhof" in Ede. In late spring, it already started to look like something with potential. The oriental poppies blooming was a sight to behold in early spring. I sowed more bright red annual tulip poppies in the planting gaps, and put in more dierama's.
Now, fall of 2019, the festuca's are big and plump and fluffy, the stipa sway in the wind and catch the filtered light beautifully. The Callicarpa has berries which it will keep as its leaves drop later in fall, and the anemone's bloom daintily. Stipa has sown itself (I gave it a little help) in the planting gaps that are still left. The labor of last fall has paid off.
Click the image above to see a gif of swaying stipa in the wind (13.2 mb).
Next spring I will add more Dierama's, and I'll hopefully have my first fully filled border. I won't say "finished" border, because as people say, a garden is never finished. I quite like that idea.